A facsimile system is known that is configured by network-connecting a communication device, a mail server and a facsimile server, the communication device having e-mail transmission function, the facsimile server facsimile (FAX)-transmitting a transmission image based on an image attached to an e-mail from the communication device (for example, see JP Laid-Open Patent Application Publication No. 2006-352734).
For example, it is also possible that the communication device generates an e-mail in which a mail address including a transmission destination telephone number of a FAX transmission is specified in a “To” field, which is a field describing an e-mail transmission destination, and transmits this e-mail (facsimile server addressed e-mail) to the mail server by using simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP), and then the mail server performs transmission to the facsimile server (facsimile server addressed transmission). The facsimile server receives the e-mail from the communication device via the mail server, determines a transmission destination telephone number from numbers in the “To” field of the e-mail, and performs FAX transmission to a facsimile device of the transmission destination telephone number.
Further, it is also possible that the communication device generates an e-mail (broadcast facsimile server addressed e-mail) in which a plurality of mail addresses each including a transmission destination telephone number of FAX transmission are specified in the “To” field of the e-mail and transmits this e-mail to the mail server, and then the mail server performs transmission to the facsimile server (broadcast facsimile server addressed transmission). The facsimile server receives the e-mail from the communication device via the mail server, determines a plurality of specified transmission destination telephone numbers from numbers in the “To” field of the e-mail, and performs broadcast FAX transmission to a plurality of facsimile devices of the transmission destination telephone numbers.
However, similar to the case of broadcast transmission of a normal e-mail, a mail server in a conventional facsimile system may generate an e-mail for the same number of times as the number of the mail addresses described in the “To” field of the e-mail and store the generated plurality of e-mails in a mailbox of the mail server. In this case, the plurality of the e-mails of the same content is redundantly stored in the mailbox. Therefore, the facsimile server performs broadcast FAX transmission of the e-mails of the same content to a plurality of facsimile devices for the same number of times as the number of e-mails stored in the mailbox. For this reason, there is a problem that a user of a facsimile device feels the inconvenience that multiple facsimile images of the same content are continuously received at the same facsimile device.
Therefore, a purpose of the present application is to provide a communication device and a facsimile system that allow the inconvenience that multiple facsimile images of the same content are received at the same facsimile device to be reduced even when a plurality of transmission destination telephone numbers are specified as facsimile transmission destinations.